Future Appears Bleak For The Sinking Whale

INSIDE THE NHL

The next time the Tampa Bay Lightning are on a three-game losing skid and those expansion doldrums begin to creep in as you slump into your seat at Expo Hall, pinch yourself.

You could be in Hartford.

At least Ottawa, San Jose and Tampa Bay have handy excuses should the losses begin to stockpile. And the Lightning have yet to require one, staying in the middle of the Norris Division race.

The Senators, Sharks and Lightning are, after all, expansion franchises, and each has been allotted a certain grace period before they must shun their double-runner blades.

But what of the Whalers? They're terrible, and they seem to be getting worse all the time. From the 1985-86 season through 1990-91, the Whalers averaged more than 15,100 fans in all but one season. Today, the team regularly plays before a crowd half that size. One can hardly blame the fans for staying away.

With attendance already plummeting to new lows this season, Hartford went out last week and practically gave away center John Cullen, 28, who has scored 107 goals the past three seasons. It was only two seasons ago that he scored 39 goals and had 110 points in Pittsburgh. The Whalers did little more than dump his $900,000 salary, getting a second-round draft pick (either in 1993 or '94) in exchange from Toronto.

Sure, Cullen was off to a slow start with only nine points and a minus-15 rating (meaning opponents scored 15 times more than the Whalers when he was on the ice). But in Hartford, where the team won five of its first 21 games - three of the victories coming over hapless Ottawa - who wasn't off to a slow start? Cullen may have been the team's only All-Star caliber player. Who's the best player left? Murray Craven?

Don't be surprised should Cullen prosper in Toronto, a young, exciting team on the rise, where he'll get to be the team's No. 2 center behind Doug Gilmour. When Cullen was in a similar situation, playing behind Mario Lemieux in Pittsburgh two seasons ago, was when he last was on top of his game.

Cullen has said he likes the idea of playing for the Maple Leafs, where he will wear the same uniform number (19) his father, Barry, wore in Toronto in the 1950s.

The trade does not bode well for Tampa Bay, which must finish ahead of two Norris Division teams to qualify for the playoffs. The Maple Leafs have improved and may do so further by trading goaltender Grant Fuhr sometime soon. As for the Whalers? They're doing what any whale does, maintaining a steady descent to the bottom of the ocean. And they're getting to a point so low that climbing back surely will result in the bends.

Here are some offerings from Gil Stein's ''State of the NHL'' address delivered last week as the league hit its quarter-mile mark:

Major stick fouls were down 45 percent (from 51 to 28) from a similar period last season; fighting penalties are down 56 percent (from 461 to 201); and the eight games televised by ESPN reached 615,000 households, almost double the number when ESPN last televised games four years ago. Overall league attendance, which does not include small rinks in Tampa and Ottawa in its mix, is down about 1.5 percent (14,140 to 13,924).

Attendance figures are up for the New York Islanders (a 30-percent increase) and in Quebec and Winnipeg, but attendance has dropped in St. Louis, Buffalo, Hartford, Edmonton and Washington. The Lightning, who return home Saturday to play Detroit, have had five sellouts in 12 home dates.

Expansion watch: With a victory at Toronto on Tuesday, the Lightning's fourth road triumph, the team surpassed San Jose's number of victories on the road a year ago. It also is more road victories than registered by the expansion Oakland Seals (1967-68), New York Islanders (1972-73), Kansas City Scouts (1974-75), and, of course, the Washington Capitals (1975-76), who were 1-39. San Jose was 3-35-2 on the road last season.